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The third Stacks Bitcoin staking bond is bigger than everything that came before it. According to a post on X, Bond 3 attracted 1,005 BTC, more than the first two bonds put together.
The numbers behind Bond 3
Stacks announced Bond 3 on November 2, 2026, with a capacity of 1,005 BTC. The bond is set to open on or around November 10, 2026.
For comparison, the Genesis Bond held 230 BTC. Bond 2 came in at approximately 505 BTC.
Add those two together and you still fall short of Bond 3 by a wide margin. Across all three bond periods, total bonded BTC now stands at 1,740 BTC.
The pitch to holders is fairly simple. Bond participants can earn an approximate 3% annualized yield, paid out weekly in BTC.
To get it, they pair timelocked BTC on Bitcoin’s main layer with STX locked on the Stacks network. The required STX ratio is 5%.
The minimum ticket for Bond 3 is 50 BTC. That keeps direct participation in whale and institution territory.
Smaller holders have another route. Liquid staking options are available through partners including StackingDAO, Xverse, and Esbee DAO, alongside self-custodial methods.
Where the yield actually comes from
Stacks points to a specific source. The rewards come from BTC bids placed by Stacks miners through Proof of Transfer, or PoX.
Under PoX, miners commit BTC to win the right to produce Stacks blocks. That committed BTC then flows to participants who lock up assets on the network.
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The PoX-5 upgrade, introduced through SIP-045, gave bonds top priority on those weekly miner rewards. Bondholders get paid first, and whatever remains goes to STX stakers and the protocol reserve.
That upgrade was activated on July 30, 2026, and it is what brought protocol bonds to the network in the first place.
The Stacks Endowment manages bond capacity with a coverage target in mind. The aim is for miner bids to cover bond obligations by roughly double.
Early results ran well ahead of that bar. During the first full cycle of the Genesis Bond, miner bids reached 17.9x coverage against the 2x target.
How the bond program got here
Bond 1 debuted on September 10, 2026, at Bitcoin block 966,350. It drew 230 BTC and has been paying weekly BTC rewards since September 17.
Bond 2 opened around October 10, 2026. It filled by October 12, which is about as fast as these things go.
Commitments across active bonds have exceeded 6.7 million STX. Fast fill rates have been linked largely to institutional interest and the growth of liquid staking, which played a notable role in Bond 2.
Stacks Labs has highlighted institutional backing from names including UTXO Management and 21Shares. Stacks Labs material framed the mechanism as a “fed rate equivalent for bitcoin.”
The broader PoX program has a longer history than the bonds. Since January 2021, PoX has distributed over 4,200 BTC to participants.
What this means for Bitcoin holders and Stacks
The core selling point is yield without bridging or rehypothecation. Bridging means moving BTC onto another chain through a third-party system. Rehypothecation means someone lends out your collateral again behind the scenes.
The jump from 230 BTC to approximately 505 BTC to 1,005 BTC suggests demand is scaling with supply. Each bond has roughly doubled the last.
The bond structure also reshapes incentives for STX stakers. Because bonds get paid first, stakers collect from what remains, so larger bonds mean a bigger slice reserved at the top.
The 5% STX requirement creates its own dynamic. Every new BTC bonded needs STX locked alongside it, which ties bond growth directly to demand for the network’s native token.
The next test is how quickly Bond 3 fills once it opens around November 10. Bond 2 needed about two days.
